It is 1806 and Napoleon is master of an empire covering half of Europe. He subdues kings, conquers woman and defies the Pope himself over the Continental Blockade. In this dazzling mix of history and creativity, Max Gallo brilliantly recreates the most pivotal and turbulent years of the Little Corporal's reign, ending with his 500,000 strong army's march into Russia in 1812. Shifting between the battlefield and the bedroom, this book follows every step of Napoleon's relentless pursuit of power.

Historian Edward Gibbons said: "Europe dates a new era from Charlemagne's restoration of the Western Empire. Now, leading biographer Derek Wilson has written a major life of the man who was the bridge between the ancient world and the world of the emerging and powerful Europe.
This Frankish chieftain was born in 742, son of Pepin the Short. Charlemagne, while repeating the military exploits of Julius Caesar, possessed a mind ignorant of classical culture. He ruled with the sagacity of a Marcus Aurelius, but the general who could order the summary dispatch of 4,500 was equally reminiscent of Caligula.
Even so, his activities were not confined to warfare. He introduced jury courts, revised the legal system, introduced new coinage, reformed weights and measures, and furthered missionary enterprises and monastic reform. He even began a German grammar and promised religious instruction in the
vernacular.
Charlemagne lives on as dramatically in legend, particularly in the Chanson de Bland, and his quarter century of imperial splendour is a truly incredible adventure story.

Despite feminist reassessments to the contrary, the conventional view that Elizabeth Gaskell personified the Victorian feminine ideal is still very much in place today. Challenging that view in an experimental biography, Felicia Bonaparte proposes that there lived in ""Mrs. Gaskell"" another, antithetical self, a daemonic double, that was not an angel in the house but instead a creature born to be a ""gypsy-bachelor."" Bonaparte does not dispute that ""Mrs. Gaskell"" did exist, but she suggests that Gaskell conceived her, as much as any fictional character, out of a desperate need produced by her childhood experience of rejection and abandonment, in order to gain the love of friends and family and the approval of the world. Gaskell herself, Bonaparte argues, told the story of her double in images encoded in her letters, fiction, and life. Using the methods of literary criticism for biographical ends, Bonaparte traces a pattern of these images, showing how a metaphor that may turn up as a figure of speech in one of Gaskell's letters may be embodied in a character in one of her short stories, dramatized in an incident or plot in one of her novels, and even actualized in an action or a relationship in her life. To reach the inner woman, Bonaparte claims, it is necessary to ""read"" Gaskell's letters, fiction, and life as a single poetic text. In addition to presenting a radically different interpretation both of Gaskell and of her literary work, Bonaparte's unique approach opens up interesting possibilities in a number of other areas: in the writing of biography, in the analysis of metaphor in the nineteenth-century novel, in the study of the relationship between literature and life, in the exploration of links between the inner and outer self, and in women's studies generally.

An illustrated biography of Isabelle Eberhardt who, although she died young, became a legend in her own lifetime. Using her diaries and many previously unpublished letters, the author tells of her childhood in Geneva, her adventures in the North African desert and her identification with the Arabs. The film rights of this book have been sold.

A classic study of James Graham a hero, nobleman and military genius who struggled for years against the anti royalists in the Civil War in Scotland. It covers his life from his youth through to the marches across mountains and glens until he was executed in 1650.

This groundbreaking book looks at one of the greatest cover-ups in history and dares to think the unthinkable about Christianity - that it was in fact a Jewish Mystery School modelled on the ancient Pagan Mysteries.

The myth of Dionysus bears startling resemblances to the the story of Jesus Christ. It compares with the biblical story in the following ways:

* Dionysus is God made flesh and is hailed as the 'Saviour of Mankind' and the 'Son of God'

* His father is God and and his mother is a mortal virgin who afterwards becomes worshipped as the 'Mother of God'

* He is born in a cowshed

* He drives out demons, turns water into wine and and raises people from the dead

* He rides triumphantly into town while people wave palms to honour him

The date revered by the first Christians as Jesus' birthday was originally that of Dionysus, also the three day Spring Festival of Dionysus celebrating his death and resurrection coincides with the Christian festival of Easter. The last Supper and the Eucharist are also parallel Dionysian rites.

This is not common knowledge as the story was a closely guarded secret of the Pagan mysteries. Secondly the evidence of Christianity's pagan roots were systematically covered up the Roman Church.

A towering philosophical novel that is the summation of her Objectivist philosophy, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is the saga of the enigmatic John Galt, and his ambitious plan to 'stop the motor of the world', published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Opening with the enigmatic question 'Who is John Galt?', Atlas Shrugged envisions a world where the 'men of talent' - the great innovators, producers and creators - have mysteriously disappeared. With the US economy now faltering, businesswoman Dagny Taggart is struggling to get the transcontinental railroad up and running. For her John Galt is the enemy, but as she will learn, nothing in this situation is quite as it seems. Hugely influential and grand in scope, this story of a man who stopped the motor of the world expounds Rand's controversial philosophy of Objectivism, which champions competition, creativity and human greatness.

Ayn Rand (1905-82), born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, emigrated to America with her family in January 1926, never to return to her native land. Her novel The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and eventually became a bestseller. Still occasionally working as a screenwriter, Rand moved to New York City in 1951 and published Atlas Shrugged in 1957. Her novels espoused what came to be called Objectivism, a philosophy that champions capitalism and the pre-eminence of the individual.

If you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, you might like Rand's The Fountainhead, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'A writer of great power ... she writes brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly'
The New York Times

'Atlas Shrugged ... is a celebration of life and happiness'
Alan Greenspan

A gripping, suspenseful, deeply satisfying new novel about corruption, deceit, and love.

Robbie Feaver (pronounced "favor") is a charismatic personal injury lawyer with a high profile practice, a way with the ladies, and a beautiful wife (whom he loves), who is dying of an irreversible illness. He also has a secret bank account where he occasionally deposits funds that make their way into the pockets of the judges who decide Robbie's cases.

Robbie is caught by the Feds, and, in exchange for leniency, agrees to "wear a wire" as he continues to try to fix decisions. The FBI agent assigned to supervise him goes by the alias of Evon Miller. She is lonely, uncomfortable in her skin, and impervious to Robbie's charms. And she carries secrets of her own.

As the law tightens its net, Robbie's and Evon's stories converge thrillingly. Scott Turow takes us into, the world of greed and human failing he has made immortal in Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty, and The Laws of Our Fathers, all published by FSG. He also shows us enduring love and quiet, unexpected heroism. Personal Injuries is Turow's most reverberant, most moving novel-a powerful drama of individuals trying to escape their characters.

The mesmerising new novel from Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement. The world is forever changing. But for so many of us, old wounds run deep. Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers.

'Lessons is deep and wide, ambitious and humble, wise and substantial... McEwan's best novel in 20 years' New Statesman
'Superb... A wonderful author has delivered another mesmerising, memorable novel' Independent
'Lessons triumphantly achieves its primary aim of conveying the "commonplace and wondrous" intertwining of global history and everyday life' Daily Telegraph

While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means -- literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love.

His journey raises important questions. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape us and our memories? What role do chance and contingency play in our existence? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?

This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

In a third North American rail journey, the author of Making Tracks and his native Latin collaborator explore not only the rich past of Mexico and the country's beautiful landscape, but also the conflict between their choice of transportation and the Mexican culture itself.

Why are contemporary secular theorists so frequently drawn to saints, martyrs, and questions of religion? Why has Joan of Arc fascinated some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century? In a book that faces crucial issues in both critical and feminist inquiry, Françoise Meltzer uses the story of Joan as a guide for reading the postmodern nostalgia for a body that is intact and transparent. She argues that critics who place excessive emphasis on opposition and difference remain blind to their nostalgia for the pre-Cartesian idea that the body and mind are the same.

Engaging a number of theorists, and alternating between Joan's historical and cultural context, Meltzer also explores the ways in which postmodern thinkers question subjectivity. She argues that the way masculine subjects imagine Joan betrays their fear of death and necessitates the role of women as cultural others: enigmatic, mysterious, dark, and impossible. As such, Joan serves as a useful model of the limits and risks of subjectivity. For Meltzer, she is both the first modern and the last medieval figure. From the ecclesial jury that burned her, to the theorists of today who deny their attraction to the supernatural, the philosophical assumptions that inform Joan's story, as Meltzer ultimately shows, have changed very little.

Dave Lowry juxtaposes his singular experience as an adept student of kenjutsu (the art of swordsmanship) under a Japanese teacher in St. Louis with a riveting account of the samurai tradition in Japan. Intertwining tales of the masters with reflections on his own apprenticeship in the samurai's arts, he reveals in their time-honored methods a way of life with profound relevance to modern times.

"Two stories placed in front of each other like mirrors. The first is set in first-century Rome and relates the rise and fall of Mazuf, a homosexual Syrian scribe who becomes a renowned man of letters and a murderer. The second is a confession by a present-day American named Laurence; it seems to be simply a record of his sexual exploits during his student days at Harvard, but we soon find out there is much more to his tale than first appears. Laurence, a disaffected and sophisticated narrator, is a murderer too. But what is the connection between the two men? Is the key an old copy of Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and fall of the Roman Empire'? And can stories change, not only the future, but more compellingly, the past?"--Page 4 of cover.

The Green Parrot is a strange and beautiful story with the faintly arid charm of a miniature painted on the cover of a seventeenth snuff box. There is a great deal of reticent drama, but no melodrama. The overtones of the story are left to the reader's imagination. The result is a slender, but captivating and completely self sufficient novel. THE NEW YORK TIMES

"The New York Trilogy," consists of three interlocking novels: "City of Glass," "Ghosts," and "The Locked Room" - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller. "City of Glass" As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, a writer of detective stories, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might have written "Ghosts" Blue, a student of Brown, has been hired to spy on Black. From a window of a rented house on Orange street, Blue stalks his subject, who is staring out of his window. "The Locked Room" Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and a cache of novels, plays, and poems. What happened? Features an introduction from Luc Sante and incredible cover illustrations by Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist Art Spiegelman, creator of "Maus" and "In the Shadow of No Towers".

The first English translation of the Memoirs of Marchand is "an invaluable contribution to those interested in the Napoleonic period. As Napoleon's valet, Marchand is in constant contact with the Emperor during the last ten years of his life. "Educated, discreet, and devoted", Marchand records the personal work habits, relationship with family and staff, events at the Tuileries, Waterloo, the Bellerophon, the Northumberland, and finally, the moment of death. "There is no doubt of the authenticity of these Memoirs, nor the truth of the facts which Marchand reports", states Napoleonic scholar Jean Tulard, Professor at the Sorbonne, Member of the Institute of France. "This is the last of the Napoleonic manuscripts to be translated into English".

When Kent Nerburn received a letter from Jennifer, a young woman questioning her calling to spend her life in the arts, the writer and artist was struck by how closely her questions mirrored the doubts and yearnings of his own youth.

Nerburn resolved that he would write his own letter: a letter of welcome and encouragement to all young artists setting out on the same strange and magical journey, sharing the wisdom of a life spent working in the arts.

From struggles with money and the bitterness of rejection, to spiritual questions of inspiration and authenticity, Dancing With the Gods offers insight, solace and courage to help young artists on the winding road to artistic fulfilment. Tender and joyous, it is a celebration of art's power to transform the darkest of human experience and give voice to the grandest of human hopes.

In this volume, Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel retells stories from the hasidic masters.

This book is a beautiful study of the interplay between past and present. The narrator of the novel is a lifelong traveller--Cambridge, Budapest, New York, Tel Aviv, The Hague, and Zurich are all cities he has lived in. But wherever he stays, the impressions he gets and the people he sees remind him of figures from long ago: a lost friend, a former lover, and above all, his father. He has a past, but the present eludes him, and he moves about the world as if he is a ghost, his intrusive memories ensuring that he is never completely alone and yet never completely happy. The writing is spare and elegant, and this enchanting novel will not be easily forgotten.

Marcus Cato Sulla Aemilius Paullus Pompey The Gracchi Marius Julius Caesar Anthony 'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.' In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is also implicitly to educate and warn those in his own day who wielded power. In prose that is rich, elegant and sprinkled with learned references, he explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. While drawing chiefly on historical sources, he brings to biography a natural story-teller's ear for a good anecdote. Throughout the ages Plutarch's Lives have been valued for their historical value and their charm. This new translation will introduce new generations to his urbane erudition. The most comprehensive selection available, it is accompanied by a lucid introduction, explanatory notes, bibliographies, maps and indexes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers * a new, modern-spelling text, collated and edited from all existing printings * on-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, allusions, and much else * detailed introduction considers composition, sources, performances, and changing critical attitudes to the play * illustrated with production photographs and related art * full index to introduction and commentary * durable sewn binding for lasting use not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth- century scholarship. Times Literary Supplement ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This selection of John Donne's most powerful prose shows that the man remembered predominantly for his poetry was also a preacher, and a prose writer of extraordinary power. In it, he explores the metaphysical collision between poetry and religion, suicide and duty, the secular and the spiritual that characterized his times. Edited with an introduction and notes by Neil Rhodes.

Extraordinary and diverse people inhabit this rich, ripe, occasionally raucous collection of short stories. Some are based on real people - Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's handsome and reluctant muse who never asked to be called the Black Venus, trapped in the terminal ennui of the poet's passion, snatching at a little lifesaving respectability against all odds...Edgar Allen Poe, with his face of a actor, demonstrating in every thought and deed how right his friends were when they said 'No man is safe who drinks before breakfast.'

And some of these people are totally imaginary. Such as the seventeenth century whore, transported to Virginia for thieving, who turns into a good woman in spite of herself among the Indians, who have nothing worth stealing. And a girl, suckled by wolves, strange and indifferent as nature, who will not tolerate returning to humanity.

Angela Carter wonderfully mingles history, fiction, invention, literary criticism, high drama and low comedy in a glorious collection of stories as full of contradictions and surprises as life itself.

This remarkable, moving story takes us on a seductive journey through his childhood and adolescence, along Jerusalem's war-torn streets in the 1940s and '50s and into a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. Caught between them is one small boy with the weight of generations on his shoulders. Oz dives into 120 years of family history and paradox, the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Farce and heartbreak, history and humanity make up this story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.

Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality is a compelling study of the important elements that make up a person's core personality, and a detailed exploration of - and introduction to - how Time Line therapy works in practice. Written by Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality is a compelling study of the important elements that make up a person's core personality, and a detailed exploration of - and introduction to - how Time Line therapy works in practice. Utilizing discoveries made by Richard Bandler, Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality expands and updates our knowledge of how people actually store their memories, and sheds light on the effect that the system used for memory storage has on the individual. The authors contend that the concept of Time Line, or the notion of time that you have stored in your mind, shapes and structures your experience of the world, and therefore shapes your personality. Time Line therapy is therefore based on the premise that the client goes back to the first time they remember a particular problem, does change work - utilizing Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to eliminate irritating behaviors or issues - and, if necessary, goes to subsequent times when their behavior or response was a problem, and undertakes further change work to resolve it. 

The adventures of Huon of Bordeaux have been perennial favorites since their first appearance in the thirteenth century as a French chanson de geste. Within decades there were spin-offs and a prequel. The story was reprinted, popularized, and translated from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It became a staple of children's literature as well as the basis for theatrical and operatic works. By the twentieth century, it had become the inspiration for fantasy writers.

Huon's adventures begin when he is summoned to Charlemagne's court, where he is attacked, betrayed, and banished to travel to the East. There he will have to perform impossible feats before he can return and reclaim his title as Duke of Bordeaux. Although courteous, Huon is a foolish young knight, and Charlemagne himself is portrayed as an old fool. But fortunately for Huon, mysterious forces, magical objects, and benevolent beings come to his aid against these evil powers and save him from his worst errors of judgment and hubris. Confonted by cruel and wicked Saracens and their smart and beautiful daughters, Huon negotiates the impossible and attains his ideal, both as a man and a knight.

Jones and Kibler's verse translation sings with grace, humor, and wit. For both teaching and for pure literary enjoyment, this first modern English translation of Huon of Bordeaux will be a major complement to the corpus of medieval French epic literature.

The bestselling complete history of the British Navy, the national story through a different prism.

The story of our navy is nothing less than the story of Britain, our culture and our empire. Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world's oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing inevitable about this rise to maritime domination, nor was it ever an easy path.

This book also reveals how the naval history has shaped us in more subtle and surprising ways, through language, culture, politics and national character all owe a great debt to this conquest of the seas. This is a gripping, fresh take on our national story.

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life - painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea.

But over the course of one summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash co-worker, aggressive customers and an enigmatic magazine photographer. Fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she dares, briefly, to dream of connection in an unforgiving world.